Social Media, Copywriting, Research

Why you should stop worrying about social media ‘success’

When paying someone to look after social media activity for a business, either in-house or on a freelance basis, you will want to see a good ROI. You will want to see that your investment in social media is proving to be a success for your company.

The problem with measuring success is establishing what success on social media looks like. How you use social media, and what results this should produce depends a lot on what you’re actually trying to achieve. Just to say ‘more sales’ is not really enough to measure, but then does it really matter?

The problem with social media is that it’s one part of a wider marketing strategy, and that different people react to different campaigns in very different ways. As a social media manager, I try not to get too hung up on measuring something that has effectively happened in the past, unless it’s going to change what we do to a large extent. While it’s useful to know what’s worked and what hasn’t, I also know that social media success presents itself in ways that are so difficult to measure that it would take time and effort that could be better spent elsewhere. I’ve not met a client yet who would rather pay me to spend time measuring what’s passed rather than actually doing.